Julia Borst
Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Romance Studies, University of Bremen
Education: MA in Romance Studies and Economic Policy (U Freiburg)
PhD in Romance Literary Studies (U Hamburg).
Current research project: “The Spanish Black Diaspora: Afro-Spanish Literature of the 20th and 21st Century” (funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), project N° 353492083).
Bio: Currently, principal investigator of the research project “The Spanish Black Diaspora”. April – September 2021: interim full professor of French and Francophone literary and cultural studies at U Bremen. Since 2018, deputy director of the Institute for Postcolonial and Transcultural Studies (INPUTS) of U Bremen. 2021 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize. 2019 Sibylle Kalkhof-Rose Academy Prize for the Humanities. 2016 Berninghausen Prize for outstanding teaching. Author of a book on violence and trauma in contemporary Haitian novels (Gewalt und Trauma im haitianischen Gegenwartsroman: Die Post-Duvalier-Ära in der Literatur. Tübingen: Narr, 2015) and articles in peer-reviewed journals such as The French Review, French Studies, The Journal of Haitian Studies, Research in African Literatures, Open Cultural Studies, Tydskrif vir Letterkunde.
Research Interests: Afroeuropean studies, diaspora and migration studies, Caribbean literatures, postcolonial and decolonial theory, decolonial feminism, violence and trauma in literature.
Email/Contact: borst@uni-bremen.de
Axel Dunker
Professor of German Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Bremen
Education: After studying German and English literature (U Bielefeld, U Frankfurt/M.) he received a PhD in German Literature (U Bielefeld). Habilitation in German and comparative literature with a study on literature after Auschwitz (U Mainz).
Current Research Projects:
— NS-Euthanasia in literature
— Arno Schmidt Handbook
— Editor of the Series ‘Postkoloniale Studien in der Germanistik’ (Aisthesis, Bielefeld), together with Gabriele Dürbeck (Vechta)
Bio: Guest professorships at the universities of Bielefeld and Vienna (Austria), 2008-2013 speaker of the DFG-Network ‘Postkoloniale Studien in der Germanistik’, since 2010 speaker of IfkuD (Institut für kulturwissenschaftliche Deutschlandstudien), member of the jury of LiteraTour Nord and the Hilde Domin Prize for literature in exile.
Research interests: Postcolonial German studies, German literature and colonialism, Holocaust studies, contemporary literature.
Email/Contact: adunker@uni-bremen.de
Gisela Febel
Professor of Romance Studies and Literature at the University of Bremen
Education: After studying Romance languages, philosophy and German literature (U Stuttgart, Lausanne CH), she received a doctorate with her thesis focusing on myth in the French novel of the 20th century using the example of Robbe-Grillet and habilitated with a study on poetics and rhetoric around 1500.
Current Research Projects:
— Management of the research project Transatlantic Circulation and Transformation of Ideas: The Effect of the Enlightenment in the Newer Franco-Caribbean Literatures (DFG-Project of the University of Bremen and the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg)
— Various expert activities for Canada and Austria, the DFH, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation — DFG), etc.
— Editor of the series FOLIES: Forum Literaturen Europas (LIT, Hamburg) together with Romana Weiershausen (Saarbrücken)
—Holder of The Order of the French State for Cultural Merits: Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques
Bio: Since its initiation in 2014 she has been a founding member of the interdisciplinary and collaborative research platform “Worlds of Contradiction” at the University of Bremen. Beginning in 2019, she has been a spokesperson for the “Plural Knowledge Forms” division. She has managed an international research project called “Origins of Modernity” in collaboration with the Center for Cultural Studies and Cultural Theory of the University of Stuttgart and the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris as well as associated partners in Vienna, Paris, Bern, and Neuchâtel.
Research Interests: Postcolonial and francophone literature, contemporary fiction and poetry, early modern literature, modern theories, transcultural studies, and transmedial issues of aesthetics.
Email/Contact: febel@uni-bremen.de
Associated Members:
Linda Maeding
Senior Lecturer at the Department of German and Slavic Philology, Complutense University Madrid
Education: MA in Comparative Literature (U Mainz)
PhD in Comparative Literature and German Philology (U Mainz / U Barcelona).
Current Research Project: “Latin America as European Utopia. Communities and Unstable Orders” (funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), project n° 404354183)
Bio: She was a DAAD assistant at U La Habana as well as a DAAD visiting professor at U of Barcelona (2008-2013) and is a member of the Department of German Philology at U Complutense (Madrid) since 2017. One of the founding members of the interdisciplinary research lab “Digital diaspora” (funded by the collaborative research initiative “Worlds of Contradiction”, U Bremen). Coeditor of: Utopie im Exil. Literarische Figurationen des Imaginären (Transcript, 2017). Articles in German Life and Letters, Oxford German Studies, Arcadia, The German Quarterly, Revista de Filología alemana, Anuari de Filologia. Literatura Contemporàniès.
Research interests: Exile and migration literatures, postcolonial German studies, Utopian studies, Hispanic-German literary relations.
Email/Contact: lmaeding@ucm.es
Student Assistant:
Shola Adenekan
Education: MPhil & PhD in African Literature (University of Birmingham, UK). Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism (University of Westminster, London, UK).
Current Research Project: Recipient and Principal Investigator for the ERC Starting Grant, Yoruba Print Culture (2021-2026). Project number 949557.
Bio: Publisher of The New Black Magazine. Currently Associate Professor of African Literature at the University of Ghent, Belgium. Previously, Assistant Professor of Literary and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Have worked as a postdoctoral researcher at University of Bremen (Germany), University of Bayreuth (Germany) and the University of Leeds (UK). Author of African Literature in the Digital Age (2021), and co-editor of the special guest issue Digital Africas (Postcolonial Text, vol. 15, no. 3-4, 2020).
Research Interests: Digital culture; digital humanities; African literature and culture; Africana studies.
Email/Contact: Olorunshola.adenekan@ugent.be
Corina Wieser-Cox
Education: BA in English Literature & Creative Writing (Troy University), MA in English-Speaking Cultures (U Bremen)
Current Research Project: Doctoral Dissertation titled “We’re Trans, We’re Queer and We’re Here: Decolonizing Mexican and Chicanx Queer Cinema”
Bio: Corina Wieser-Cox (they/them) was born and raised on the Mexico-US border in Brownsville, Texas and is both Chicanx and a scholar of Chicanx & Borderland theory. Corina holds a BA degree from Troy University in English Literature and Creative Writing and an MA degree from the University of Bremen in English-Speaking Cultures with a specialization in postcolonial literature and film. Their MA Thesis titled “Brujeria in the Borderlands: Portrayals of Mexican American Witchcraft in Hollywood Horror films” won the GAPS Graduate Award (Gesellschaft für Anglophone Postkoloniale Studien) in May 2021 and the Bremer Studienpreis in March 2022. Corina is currently a Ph.D. candidate and research assistant working with Professor Dr. Kerstin Knopf at the University of Bremen and teaches in the English-Speaking Cultures – North American Postcolonial and Literary Studies department. Corina is coeditor of COPAS – Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies and also coedits the Routledge Handbook of Indigenous Film with Kerstin Knopf, Ernie Blackmore and WG Pearson which is currently in preparation.
Research Interests: Borderland & Chicanx Studies, Queer & Gender Studies, Horror & Speculative Fiction and Film, Trans* & Nonbinary Representations within Film, Native Mexican Literature and Film, Postcolonial Theories & Concepts, Indigenous Teachings & Knowledges, Two-Spirit & Queer Indigeneities in Fiction and Film.
Email/Contact: corina@uni-bremen.de
Lab Alumni
Selim Basoglu – Student Assistant (2022 – 2023)
Bio: He graduated from Kadir Has University holding two degrees, New Media and Psychology. And he completed his minor program in Political Science and Public Administration. He voluntarily worked for newspapers and NGOs to gain field experience in media and politics. Additionally, he has been assisting in various research labs.